I’ve been doing a bit of work in the house myself in the past week. Mostly painting future floor boards of the small attick space, insulating around the windows, filling up some of the holes in the wall.

In the meantime, while all construction workers are on holiday, I’m at the point where I have to decide on finishings. I got a price offer for the electrical works and I’ve decided to have a home domotics system installed. I want to be able to control all my electrical sockets, want to make sure that with one touch of a button, I can swith everything off in the house, lights, TV, heating, ventilation, computer, etc. and avoid stand-by electricity use.

I also had a first price offer for design lighting. I happen to think lighting is important and can really change the way a room looks. So many choices, so difficult to choose. Choosing switches/sockets is already hard.

I’m probably going to go for the simple Niko Intense as it’s basic and not overly expensive.

The Niko Pure is nicer but far more expensive (it’s flatter, made out of steel)

Then there’s the Niko Mysterious but I don’t want to put my electrician through that. You can only see a circle, can wallpaper over it. Too expensive, I fear.

Then there’s the retro Bauhaus switches that I looooove!

It even comes in porcelain!

Unfortunately: too expensive, and it’s always just one switch. I’ll be combining about three switches in one switch.

I really like their regular switch too.

Then there’s bticino, which we have it home

There are more brands out there, Legrand, GIRA (rather nice too),… so many choices, and that’s just light switches. Don’t get me started on taps and baths and sinks…(that’ll be another post)

The home domotics system I’m going for is Teletask.

I’m not going to go for the fancy touch screens. I’ll have two of these though, to control everything (lights, switches, heating, etc.)

And I might get the Iphone application so that I can control everything in my house from my future iphone. I’m looking forward to playing around with the domotics system, programming it all, etc.